Newbies drive me nuts !

BrendanP

Senior Member
That's great Tom. Its something you could do that could have a great impact on some young persons life. A tutorial that you upload might the thing that starts the next edison, marconi,goddard or tesla on his or her way.

 
 

Dippy

Moderator
Or, if home-movies are as bad as my brother-in-law's , you might consider a downloadable slide-show using Powerpoint.
 

Tom2000

Senior Member
Well, don't get too excited yet. It takes a *whole lotta work!!!* to plan and execute a good training video. All I'll commit to right now is thinking about it...

But I still think it's a great idea!

Tom
 

BrendanP

Senior Member
It doesnt have to be a Dr. Zhivago style epic. Set the camera up on your bench and give a running explanation as you wire up a bread board. The strenght of the medium is its informality.

 
 

DJPolats

New Member
I am an avid reader of this forum and am not advanced to the point of being able to contribute much to this forum, but found the "newbie" comments interesting. As a nearly 50 year old "newbie" and having worked with kids of many ages including FIRST robotics, I have to agree with the "Patience is a Virtue" approach, especially to the young learners. One of my gripes regarding the education system (at least in the US - New York State specifically) is graduates from school may score high on standardized tests but they have not learned how to learn! Schools provide all the learning materials and the forum to learn. Picking up a skill or knowledge base on your own is a skill in itself. To that end I think this forum has the opportunity to provide that. Someone in this thread mentioned having links to Hippy's site. I have learned A LOT from that site. A separate newbie forum may be a possibility as well. A "Try this" link may be good as well to get folks started. In my years as a mechanical engineer I have picked up many different software packages and learn quite a bit by looking at more complex code and deciphering the code. In closing, keep up the great work. I look forward to many more insights.
 

JezWeston

New Member
BrendanP hits it on the nail when he said:
"I'd suggest anyone who goes to the trouble of acquiring some picaxes,a breadboard/pcb etc, then finds this forum, then posts a question has already shown they're willing to have a go. 99.999% people don't even get that far."

Picaxes are for starting with, for learning what microcontrollers can do, hence its inevitable that newbies will ask dumb questions. (They're also for continuing with, but I digress.)

There would be less newbie questions if there were better tutorials, code libraries, more detailed FAQs. The forums are hard to search. The web is hard to search if you are starting from very little knowledge. If don't know that an integrator circuit is called an integrator circuit, you're not going to find schematics or code samples.

Help from members of this board has got my first circuit in 15 years working just as I need it to work, and I'm very grateful.
I might have a Ph.D. in engineering but it's materials not electronics, so I would have been most stumped without your support.

And yes, I might be Dr Happyinmotion, but I still put resistors in the wrong way around.
 

jpyle1

New Member
I have used school grades(from decades ago) to remember Anode = A+ (positive) and Cathode is C- (minus,negative,earth,not positive,ect). Had some of each during schooling. Transistors came out with arrow position---NPN = not pointing in PNP = pointing in,pal. Interesting to see all the variants we use as reminders for "simple" things that many use daily. JP
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Another aspect of this discussion is wading in too deep or expecting too much. It's not a criticism per se as boundaries aren't pushed and things aren't learned otherwise. This extends from newbies to those at the cutting edge.

We often see people attempting to control complex devices with complex protocols and getting quickly frustrated. That's not surprising when there are two states of affairs; it works or it doesn't and there's little way to tell immediately why something isn't working. It all has to work or nothing will.

I2C, SPI and other high-speed interfaces are the big problems, along with those which involve handshaking, and doubly so when using in-built peripherals to perform a task and not bit-banged where there's at least some visible notion of what's meant to be going on.

The reality is that people doing this are often in uncharted water and are on their own unless they are lucky enough that someone else has solved the issue entirely before using the exact same hardware. Others will try to help as much as they can and suggest solutions and ideas but it's really down to two things -

* Having the right tools to do the job; digital scopes and logic analysers where applicable.

* Having the right mental approach, and more so if the tools are not available.

Just because the instructions look to be, "Connect A to B, C to D, apply power and voila !", doesn't mean it's that simple in practice.

We have people trying to control complex devices when they've never controlled simpler devices and using the advanced commands when they've never used the simpler ones. Even for those with experience it's often no picnic.

I know the frustrations of being ( hopefully temporarily ) out of one's depth, so it's really a plea to recognise and respect that others, including Rev-Ed and Technical, may be more so, rather than a complaint.

When out of one's depth, there are two choices; flounder around some more or get back to a comfortable depth then get the skills needed to inch further forward.
 

demonicpicaxeguy

Senior Member
i suppose you could say that the ease of use with the picaxe and it's incredible simplicity does tend to make people a little over confident eg (err flashing a led... lets see if we can get a rf link going............)

 
 

BeanieBots

Moderator
happyinmotion, please take care to put your resistors in the right way around. It's very irritating to have to keep rotating a board to read the values. Same applies to non electolytic caps. When they butt-up against something like an IC socket, fit them with the writing facing out!
 

Dippy

Moderator
Some excellent points have been made.

I seem to remember that many of these points (apart from the tangents) were made year ago too - maybe longer.

And in a year from now there will still be all-lowercase, single-paragraph, no-grammar postings asking how to connect an LED or saying my picaxe is broke thanx.

So, apart from letting off vaulable steam, what is going to be done about it? A vBulletin based forum would be a start. Or, not quite as good, a phpBB version.
Ready...Steady....
 

BeanieBots

Moderator
Agreed, but one simple issue remains.
Most if not all of the points raised can be found in the manuals and datasheets.
These documents have clearly never been opened let alone read or understood. How will putting the same information in another place cure that problem?

Having said that, a centralised and organised repository for those who desire to increase their knowledge by using that "un cool", old fashioned geekish communication method known to the ancients as reading, would at least be an area they could be pointed to.
 

Dippy

Moderator
BeanieBots - how could you!?
Read?
A terrible four letter word to some.

Copy... now there's a four letter word many like.

Search? Yes, I know it's 6 letters , but why search when some kind soul (not sole) will spend 20 minutes searching for you?

Bottom Line: I totally agree, but we've been here SO many times and nothing is done.
Apart from discuss and moan.. auto repeat ad nauseum.

I seem to remember, some time ago, a list of to-do's for newbies to check. Where is it? Gone, like all these postings they are ephemeral. The Rev-Ed needs a clear link for Newbies.

Vbulletin is better. YGWYPF. IWTSAA.:)

But if some postings drive you nuts, then roll your eyes, grit your teeth and don't answer.

And for some people I'd suggest a suppository rather than repository.
 

BeanieBots

Moderator
Got it!
At the top of the forum page, put five or six of the most common responses such as:-
"View>Options>Editor Enhanced"
such that responders can easily copy and paste as a reply without even needing to go to a different page.

PS. Oh silly me, should have read the past threads, that one's been fixed now.
 
That thing about 0v at the top and a negative voltage at the bottom used to be a legitimate way of drawing circuits. Mind you that was when you could only get hold of PNP germanium transistors in the 60's
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
c6jones720 : That's a fair point. No one says anyone's pet hates have to be rational :)

It's good though to see why things are ( or have been ) done one way or the other, and I can understand why the terms earth, ground and 0V have all evolved in parallel and are on the whole synonyms of each other. One day we may all 'speak the same language', until then we have to accept and tolerate that there are many variants of how things are.
 

Bob Elton

New Member
PLEASE NEWBIES:
Crystal Balls are usually non-fucntional.
PLEASE EXPLAIN your project. Everyone spending hours GUESSING wastes everyones time!!!!!!
 
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